Far Cry 2 director Clint Hocking left Amazon to rejoin Ubisoft

Clint Hocking’s last game was 2008’s Far Cry 2. That was seven years ago, and he’s ready to make something new … back at Ubisoft.

Hocking published a blog today where he revealed that he has returned to Ubisoft after a short stint with Amazon Game Studios where he worked on unannounced projects for the companies line of Fire Android devices. The developer explained that he has enjoyed his time working with new people, but the Canadian had reached a point where he just wanted to put his head down and start making something that people will get to play.

“I realized I had not shipped a game in seven years,” he wrote in his blog. “I started to become anxious and depressed. I am not a patient person by nature. I was on my third visa, and had still not managed to secure a green card. It turns out that being an ex-pat is not as glamourous as Hemingway would have you believe — and I was definitely following his prescribed dosage of mojitos — so that was not the issue.”

The real issue is that Hocking was feeling rootless in the States, so he decided to return to Canada. And it just so happens that plenty of publishers make games in that country to the north.

“After a number of discussions, the opportunity I was most excited about was to return to Ubisoft — but this time in Toronto,” said Hocking. “I know most of the people who were involved in founding the studio personally, and almost all of them are still here.”

Hocking said it was “like a reunion” to walk into Ubisoft Toronto even though he has never really worked at that particular studio before.

“It almost felt genetic,” wrote Hocking. “Interviewing with people I had never even met and getting drawn into discussions about process and design — it made me realize how much my own design and development thinking had been shaped by the culture here, and perhaps – just maybe – how even some tiny fragment of my own thinking had managed to work its way into Ubisoft’s approach as well.”

Hocking is now working with the studio that most recently released Far Cry 4, a series he is intimately familiar with. This Ubi developer also made the most recent Splinter Cell, 2013’s Blacklist, which is another Hocking classic. We don’t know what Tornoto is working on next, but whatever it is will get help from Hocking.